This invention concerns pedal pivot mountings for automotive vehicles which are released in a crash. It has long been recognized that a driver of a vehicle can be injured during a frontal crash by the collapse of structure at the front end of the vehicle to which the brake pedal is mounted, pushing the pedal back into the driver's foot. Typically, the driver has forcibly depressed the brake pedal (or, less often, the clutch pedal) during a crash so that the driver is holding his or her foot and leg down rigidly against the pedal. Large forces can thus be transmitted back through the driver's foot and leg, sufficient in some circumstances to cause severe injuries.
In an effort to avoid this, arrangements have been devised in the past to either cause the brake pedal mount to be shifted away during a crash by a controlled deformation of a pivot mount support, or to completely release the pivot mount itself to allow the pedal to drop away in a crash.
It is critical that the pedal be released very quickly to avoid injuries to the driver, and designs which rely on deformation of the vehicle structure to move the pivot away may sometimes act too slowly to avoid such injuries.
The prior pedal releasing designs have relied on spring forces to disconnect the components which also may act too slowly due to the inertia of the parts, and the springs necessary also add complexity and increase the cost to manufacture such designs.
It is therefore the object of the present invention to provide an arrangement and method for releasing a pedal pivot mounting when a frontal crash occurs which does not require a spring to release the pedal, and which very quickly and reliably releases the pedal pivot mounting during a crash event which would otherwise force the pedal back into the driver's foot.